BAR ELIAS, Lebanon (AP) – Mohammed Zakaria lived in a plastic tent in eastern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, almost as long as the war in his native Syria began.
He and his family fled the bombings in 2012, believing it would be a short and temporary stay. His hometown of Homs was besieged and subjected to a fierce Syrian military campaign. She didn’t even bring her ID with him.
Almost 10 years later, the family has not yet returned. Zakaria, 53, is among millions of Syrians unlikely to return in the foreseeable future, even if they face deteriorating living conditions abroad. In addition to his relocation, Zakaria is now struggling to survive Lebanon’s financial collapse and social implosion..
“We started to assume that we would go in and out,” said Zakaria, sitting in front of his tent on a cold day recently, as his children walked in worn-out slippers.
Syria was plunged into the 2011 civil war, when Syrians revolted against President Bashar Assad amid a wave of Arab Spring riots. The protests in Syria, which began in March that year, quickly turned into an insurgency – and eventually a full-scale civil war – in response to a brutal military crackdown on Assad’s security apparatus.
Nearly half a million people were killed and about 12,000 children died or have been injured in the conflict over the past decade, according to the UNICEF Children’s Agency, UNICEF. The conflict also led to the largest relocation crisis since World War II.
The Norwegian Refugee Council this week said that since the start of the 2011 war, an estimated 2.4 million people have been displaced each year in and out of Syria. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians are facing constant displacement with each year the conflict continues and economic conditions deteriorate.
The war left Syria divided and in ruins. Nearly one million children were born in exile.
Of the 23 million pre-war inhabitants, almost 5.6 million are refugees living in neighboring countries and in Europe. About 6.5 million are displaced in Syria, most of them for more than five years.
Lebanon, a small Mediterranean country with a population of about 5 million, is home to the highest concentration of refugees per capita, estimated at about 1 million. Most of them live in informal makeshift tent settlements in Bekaa, Lebanon, not far from the Syrian border.
A former goalkeeper for a Homs construction company, Zakaria has struggled to secure his family, even as he continues to grow up in Lebanon. He has two wives and eight children, including two who were born in Lebanon. One of his children was just one year old when the family fled Syria.
In Lebanon, jobs are difficult to obtain due to an economic and financial crisis affecting the country. Financial assistance is limited and irregular. A currency crash caused inflation and prices to rise. Zakaria is now trying to make ends meet by selling gas bottles used for heating to other refugees in her settlement.
He makes 1,000 Lebanese pounds (about 10 cents) from every gas container he sells. But this winter, his neighbors in the settlement, which is home to about 200 Syrian refugee families, could hardly afford to buy enough gas to heat their tents.
Through the unprecedented economic crisis, the Lebanese currency has so far lost more than 80% of its value.
“Life is expensive here,” he said. “It’s so expensive even for drugs or doctors.”
When his wife needed urgent eye surgery, Zakariya arranged for her to be briefly introduced to Syria to have surgery there. The operation would cost 22 million Lebanese pounds – about $ 2,200 at the current market rate. They managed to do it in Syria for 85,000 Lebanese pounds ($ 850).
Zakaria said she feels great sadness for her three youngest children, who do not remember Syria and their home in Homs. Also, they haven’t been to school and can’t read or write.
According to UNICEF, nearly 750,000 Syrian children in neighboring countries, including Lebanon, have no schooling.
“All our memories are gone now,” Zakaria said, watching her children run and play on the mattress. Two dirty street cats serve as their playmates.
“Now we have a generation – 10-year-olds are a new generation,” he said. “I have small children and … they don’t even know our neighbors” at home.
Many Syrians cannot return because their homes were destroyed during the fighting or because they fear military recruitment or retribution from government forces.
Zakaria clings to the hope that one day she will return home.
“God willing, we will die in our country,” he said. “Everyone should die in their own country.”